- Healthcare giants are hiring chief digital officers to help the companies better use technology within their businesses.
- Each role carries its own priorities, from finding ways to enhance drug discovery and development, to better connecting with consumers.
- We spoke to the CDOs at CVS Health, Novartis, and Pfizer about their priorities.
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Technology could have big implications for the future of healthcare.
But to get there, centuries-old corporations will need to get up to speed on the digital age.
"I happen to believe that there are two kinds of companies," Lidia Fonseca, Pfizer's first chief digital and technology officer, told Business Insider. "Companies that are born digital, and then companies that are trying to become digital. If you're older than 20 years old, you're in the second camp."
Pfizer, for its part, is 170 years old. Fonseca was brought in at the start of 2019 to help the pharmaceutical giant become digital.
Over the past few years, healthcare companies have hired on chief digital officers to oversee efforts to make companies more tech-savvy. Each role carries its own priorities, from finding ways to enhance drug discovery and development, to better connecting with consumers.
Here's a look at how chief digital officers at Pfizer, Novartis, and CVS Health are picking their spots.
Pfizer's 5 digital priorities
When Fonseca joined Pfizer at the start of 2019 from Quest Diagnostics, she was the first at the company to hold the title of chief digital officer, a role that encompasses a company-wide effort to digitize the pharmaceutical giant.
During her first year, she's homed in on five priorities, generally based around innovating with technology and building a digital culture at Pfizer, a $210 billion pharma company known for the cholesterol-lowering pill Lipitor and cancer drug Ibrance.
- She's working to give Pfizer's teams of scientists tools to help them discover new drugs. For instance, the tools might be able to predict how a potential experimental drug is going to behave, ideally to help speed up the process of looking for new medicines. Pfizer is also working to figure out how to digitize the clinical trial process, the process in which experimental treatments are tested in patients.
- Fonseca and her team are working to build digital tools that can be provided alongside medications, with the hopes of helping the medicines work better. That can include apps as well as a robot companion.
- Coming up with digital innovations will also be critical within Pfizer's operations, to help manage the supply chain and the manufacturing of medications.
- Ideally, by collecting more information digitally and using the data already at Pfizer's disposal, Fonseca is keen to analyze that data to help the company make decisions based on it.
- To do any of that, it'll require a company that's willing to shift the way it's done business for decades. That's why one of Fonseca's five pillars is shifting the digital culture at Pfizer.
"When I think about a digital mindset, it's a different way of thinking," Fonseca said. "It starts with asking the questions, 'What experience are we trying to create? What outcomes are we trying to achieve?' And then we figure out what's the best solution that makes sense."
It'll take working with tech companies big and small. For instance, Pfizer's partnered with Amazon to host Pfizer's scientific data. By putting that data in the cloud, Pfizer scientists can build AI applications that interrogate those datasets.
Pulling off the priorities to turn Pfizer into a tech-savvy company will also take working with other healthcare companies to improve the quality and efficiency of healthcare, she said.
Bringing on an Amazon alum to digitize Novartis
Embedding technology into the company is something Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan has been pushing since stepping into the role in 2018. Novartis is a $226 billion Swiss pharmaceutical giant known for its heart drugs and work with cell and gene therapies. It traces its origins to the 18th century.
In particular, Novartis has been using AI and data science to help find leads in creating new drugs, as well as with the company's workflow in departments like sales and finance, Narasimhan told Business Insider's Emma Court and Matt Turner in July.
Bertrand Bodson, chief digital officer of Novartis, came into the role in 2018. Bodson worked at Amazon between 2003 and 2006, and focused on the company's video subscription service. Upon joining Novartis, he and his team compiled "12 lighthouses," areas where the company is focusing its digital strategy.
That covers a lot of the big areas where Novartis has been applying AI and data science, from the research side of discovering and developing new drugs to supporting the commercial groups responsible for getting treatments out on the market.
For instance, one project is geared toward making sense of the clinical trials going on at any given time by way of a "control tower," Bodson said. So far, there are 3,500 people within Novartis able to leverage the information within the control tower.
Like Pfizer, Novartis is turning to tech partners as part of its digital strategy. Both are working with Verily, Alphabet's life sciences arm, on new ways to approach clinical trials.
Novartis also has to equip its teams of sales representatives with tools. One program gives representatives the tools to reach out to the right healthcare providers. Novartis is also gearing up for a number of drug launches in the next few years, and the company's digital strategy will be key to determining the best way to market those treatments.
Over at CVS, keeping digital in mind amid a business model transition
Firdaus Bhathena, the chief digital officer of CVS Health, first came into his role in 2016 as a part of Aetna, the massive health insurer CVS acquired in 2018.
CVS is a $98 billion company that provides insurance to 39 million people and operates nearly 10,000 pharmacies. The first CVS store opened in 1963.
Within the now-combined company, there's a bunch of areas Bhathena can focus his energy on. He has to avoid being spread too thin.
"It's very tempting to-what we say in the tech world-to sort of peanut-butter spread your resources across a whole bunch of different things," Bhathena said.
What's driving Bhathena's group, he said, is a focus on improving the consumer experience within the whole organization, rather than focusing on a particular part of the business.
That can be as basic as making sure the website's up and running or powering the technology that allows users to check if there's a MinuteClinic appointment available.
Ideally, Bhathena said, it'd be a world in which CVS can have a comprehensive picture of a person so that when they come in for a visit, the organization understands that you're an Aetna member who uses CVS Caremark to manage prescription benefits, and that you've been in for three clinic visits in the past month.
Right now, that information isn't connected, often meaning patients have to start from scratch every time they go into a retail clinic or have a virtual visit.
It could also mean getting more precise with messaging, such a prompting an Aetna member who hasn't been to the doctor in years to go, rather than reaching out to all Aetna members, including those who have been in to see their doctors recently.
In particular, there are three areas of technology Bhathena is paying close attention to: AI for healthcare, connected devices and virtual care. Ideally, those technologies combined could make getting care a more connected and easy to use for consumers.
"I hope that in the next three years, when you join a health plan, you won't just get a glossy brochure in the mail," Bhathena said. Instead, you'll also get a box with connected devices that might be able to help you better triage health incidents with the help of AI, figuring out if you might need to have a virtual visit or come in for an urgent care or emergency room visit, and connecting all the way to a pharmacy if a prescription's needed that could be delivered to your door.
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